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I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.

Cormac McCarthy

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Cormac McCarthy
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: July 20
Novelist
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Providence
Rhode Island
Charles McCarthy
Best
Wanted
Kind
Luck
Instead
Needed

More quotes by Cormac McCarthy

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They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.
Cormac McCarthy
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People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
Cormac McCarthy
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In every trade save war men of talent and vigor prosper. In war they die.
Cormac McCarthy
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It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.
Cormac McCarthy
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Fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.
Cormac McCarthy
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Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.
Cormac McCarthy
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Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.
Cormac McCarthy
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Your god must once have stood at a dawn of infinite possibilities, and this is what he's made of it. You tell me that I want God's love? I don't. Perhaps I want forgiveness, but there's no-one to ask it of. And there's no going back, there's no setting things right, there's only the hope of nothingness.
Cormac McCarthy
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There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.
Cormac McCarthy
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He didn't say a lot so I tend to remember what he did say. And I don't remember that he had a lot of patience with havin to say things twice so I learned to listen the first time.
Cormac McCarthy
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Where men can't live gods fare no better.
Cormac McCarthy
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It's not about knowing who you are. It's about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. or anybody's. You dont start over. That's what it's about. Every step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it.
Cormac McCarthy
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Choose your enemies carefully 'cause they will define you Make them interesting 'cause in some ways they will mind you They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends Gonna last with you longer than your friend
Cormac McCarthy
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The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.
Cormac McCarthy
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Ever step you take is forever.
Cormac McCarthy
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There was a sharp crack from somewhere on the mountain. Then another. It's just a tree falling, he said. It's okay. The boy was looking at the dead roadside trees. It's okay, the man said. All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.
Cormac McCarthy
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War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
Cormac McCarthy
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The world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them.
Cormac McCarthy
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Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
Cormac McCarthy
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When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.
Cormac McCarthy